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• which is the cleaner way to do this simple while?

  - by user363834

  I'm learning c++ and I want to make clean and readable code and I was wondering which way is better (while is supposed to make the factorial of 9) : 1 - int main(){ int i = 1,r = i; while (i < 10) { r *= ++i; } 2 - int main(){ int i = 1,r = i; while (i < 10) { i++ r *= i } 1 may be harder to understand but it's 1 less line, is it worth it? and what about performance. Obviously it wouldn't matter in such a trivial example but it would be a good practice to make fast code from the begining.

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• Any efficient way to read datas from large binary file?

  - by limi

  Hi, I need to handle tens of Gigabytes data in one binary file. Each record in the data file is variable length. So the file is like: <len1><data1><len2><data2>..........<lenN><dataN> The data contains integer, pointer, double value and so on. I found python can not even handle this situation. There is no problem if I read the whole file in memory. It's fast. But it seems the struct package is not good at performance. It almost stuck on unpack the bytes. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

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• Standardize word macro usage within the team

  - by user138010

  Hi, I have a team of 10 persons who work on word documents, they format them as per our defined guidlines. To complete the work fast we have created a macro that has been updated on all the machines. This macro corrects the font, size and formatting. How can I ensure and implement that nobody can change/replace or delete this macro from their system? In case this happens I should get an alert. Can something be done at the system or programme level? Thanks, PK

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• increasing speed and efficiency of ajax call

  - by user1048824

  I'm not the most disciplined dev, dont know standards and am self-taught so bear with me. I create stuff very logically and fast but not always using 'programming standards'. I have a mobile app using geolocation API. it gets thousands of places from my db and makes gmaps v3 markers for the ones around the user's current location. there is an ajax call from my JS to an aspx page that calls the database, makes a json string, and sends the json string to the javascript that then creates the google map markers. would i save time if the json string was in a flat file? im not sure if, generally speaking, accessing a sql db from an aspx page is faster than c# file i/o on a flat file with pre-rendered JSON. (of course, using the flat file, it would update everytime the db is updated)

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• C++0x Smart Pointer Comparisons: Inconsistent, what's the rationale?

  - by GManNickG

  In C++0x (n3126), smart pointers can be compared, both relationally and for equality. However, the way this is done seems inconsistent to me. For example, shared_ptr defines operator< be equivalent to: template <typename T, typename U> bool operator<(const shared_ptr<T>& a, const shared_ptr<T>& b) { return std::less<void*>()(a.get(), b.get()); } Using std::less provides total ordering with respect to pointer values, unlike a vanilla relational pointer comparison, which is unspecified. However, unique_ptr defines the same operator as: template <typename T1, typename D1, typename T2, typename D2> bool operator<(const unique_ptr<T1, D1>& a, const unique_ptr<T2, D2>& b) { return a.get() < b.get(); } It also defined the other relational operators in similar fashion. Why the change in method and "completeness"? That is, why does shared_ptr use std::less while unique_ptr uses the built-in operator<? And why doesn't shared_ptr also provide the other relational operators, like unique_ptr? I can understand the rationale behind either choice: with respect to method: it represents a pointer so just use the built-in pointer operators, versus it needs to be usable within an associative container so provide total ordering (like a vanilla pointer would get with the default std::less predicate template argument) with respect to completeness: it represents a pointer so provide all the same comparisons as a pointer, versus it is a class type and only needs to be less-than comparable to be used in an associative container, so only provide that requirement But I don't see why the choice changes depending on the smart pointer type. What am I missing? Bonus/related: std::shared_ptr seems to have followed from boost::shared_ptr, and the latter omits the other relational operators "by design" (and so std::shared_ptr does too). Why is this?

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• What is most efficient way of setting row to zeros for a sparce scipy matrix?

  - by Alex Reinking

  I'm trying to convert the following MATLAB code to Python and am having trouble finding a solution that works in any reasonable amount of time. M = diag(sum(a)) - a; where = vertcat(in, out); M(where,:) = 0; M(where,where) = 1; Here, a is a sparse matrix and where is a vector (as are in/out). The solution I have using Python is: M = scipy.sparse.diags([degs], [0]) - A where = numpy.hstack((inVs, outVs)).astype(int) M = scipy.sparse.lil_matrix(M) M[where, :] = 0 # This is the slowest line M[where, where] = 1 M = scipy.sparse.csc_matrix(M) But since A is 334863x334863, this takes like three minutes. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make this faster, please contribute them! For comparison, MATLAB does this same step imperceptibly fast. Thanks!

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• Clarifying... So Background Jobs don't Tie Up Application Resources (in Rails)?

  - by viatropos

  I'm trying to get a better grasp of the inner workings of background jobs and how they improve performance. I understand that the goal is to have the application return a response to the user as fast as it can, so you don't want to, say, parse a huge feed that would take 10 seconds because it would prevent the application from being able to process any other requests. So it's recommended to put any operations that take more than say 500ms to execute, into a queued background job. What I don't understand is, doesn't that just delay the same problem? I know the user who invoked that background job will get an immediate response, but what if another user comes right when that background job starts (and it takes 10 seconds to finish), wont that user have to wait? Or is the main issue that, requests are the only thing that can happen one-at-a-time, while on the other hand a request can start while one+ background jobs are in the middle of running? Is that correct?

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• In linux, is it possible to do partial reads on a regular file

  - by Jimm

  I need to write an application that spits out log entries to a regular file at a very fast rate. Also, there will be another process, that can read the same file concurrently at the time, other process would be writing to it. I have following questions How does read() determine EOF, specially in the case, where the underlying file could be concurrently being modified? Is it possible for read() to return partially written data from the other process write? For example, the write process wrote half a line and read would pick that half line and return? The application would be written in C on linux 2.6.x using Ex4 filesystem UPDATE: Below link points to the patch, that locks inode in EXT4, before reading and writing. http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/91834/

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• Iterators over a LInked List in a Game in Java

  - by Matthew

  I am using OpenGl in android and they have a callback method called draw that gets called with out my control. (As fast as the device can handle if I am not mistaken) I have a list of "GameObjects" that have a .draw method and a .update method. I have two different threads that handle each of those. So, the question is, can I declare two different iterators in two different methods in two different threads that iterate over the same Linked List? If so, do I simply declare ListIterator<GameObject> l = objets.listIterator() each time I want a new iterator and it won't interfere with other iterators?

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• How to extract certain columns from a big Notepad text file?

  - by user560464

  I have a big text file and the data in it are in 5 columns, but I need just the first and the last column of that. It will take many days and probably with mistake if I want to enter the data of this two column one-by-one from here to another file. Is there a fast way to do this? For example: 1 1.0000000000000000 0.0000000000 S {0} 2 1.5000000000000000 0.3010299957 C {2} 3 1.7500000000000000 0.6020599913 S {0,2} 4 2.0000000000000000 0.7781512504 C {3} 5 2.3333333333333333 1.0791812460 C {3,2} 6 2.5000000000000000 1.3802112417 S {3,0,2} 7 2.5277777777777778 1.5563025008 S {0,3} 8 2.5833333333333333 1.6812412374 S {3,0,0,2} 9 2.8000000000000000 1.7781512504 C {5,2} 10 3.0000000000000000 2.0791812460 C {5,0,2} I need the first column (numbering) and the last inside { }.

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• Singleton Creation preference

  - by cwieland

  You can create singletons in a variety of ways. I am wondering which is better between these. +(ServerConnection*)shared{ static dispatch_once_t pred=0; __strong static id _sharedObject = nil; dispatch_once(&pred, ^{ _sharedObject = [[self alloc] init]; // or some other init method }); return _sharedObject; } I could see that this compiles down to something very fast. I would think that checking the predicate would be another function call. The other is: +(ServerConnection*)shared{ static ServerConnection* connection=nil; if (connection==nil) { connection=[[ServerConnection alloc] init]; } return connection; } Are there any major differences between the two? I know these are probably similar enough to not worry about it. But Just wondering.

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• Is there any way to output the actual array in c++

  - by user2511129

  So, I'm beginning C++, with a semi-adequate background of python. In python, you make a list/array like this: x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] Then, to print the list, with the square brackets included, all you do is: print x That would display this: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] How would I do the exact same thing in c++, print the brackets and the elements, in an elegant/clean fashion? NOTE I don't want just the elements of the array, I want the whole array, like this: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9} When I use this code to try to print the array, this happens: input: #include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() { int anArray[9] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}; cout << anArray << endl; } The output is where in memory the array is stored in (I think this is so, correct me if I'm wrong): 0x28fedc As a sidenote, I don't know how to create an array with many different data types, such as integers, strings, and so on, so if someone can enlighten me, that'd be great! Thanks for answering my painstakingly obvious/noobish questions!

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• Problems with the Enterframe Event

  - by user434565

  Hey guys, I have been developing a game using Flex, and used the Timer class to keep the main loop going. However, when I tried using the enterFrame event to do the main loop, there were a few problems. First of all, physics simulation seemed way too fast. Is the enterFrame event called more than once per frame? I set the application's global frame rate to 24, so shouldn't the application set off the event every 1/24 of a second? And the second problem is that when the game runs like this, some MXML components that are added are not shown. I have absolutely no idea why this happens. Help me please?!? Thanks.

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• New to Git. Made a big mistake with git commit and ended up at an older commit

  - by Ramario Depass

  I'm new to Git and I've made a huge mistake. Git kept prompting me with git - rejected master -> master (non-fast-forward). But, I still committed by using: --force This was disastrous, the whole project changed back to the stage it was at about a week ago. I've lost so many changes. I seem to have been pushed back to an earlier commit. Is there anyway I can get back to one of my newer commits? As I have made an enormous amount of changes and need to get them back. Thanks.

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• Problem: scrolling a tableview and then select the searchbar (iphone)

  - by Samui

  Hello everyone, I've been stuck with this problem for hours and I can't see the light. Please give me a hand with this: I have a tableview and a searchbar. The searchbar is situated in the navigationbar. When I do a fast scroll of the tableview, if I select the searchbar while the tableview is still decelerating, a exception raises: Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: ' -[NSMutableArray objectAtIndex:]: index 31 beyond bounds for empty array' How can I stop programmatically the deceleration of the tableview? Thanks for your time!

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• Longest substring in a large set of strings

  - by user1516492

  I have a huge fixed library of text strings, and a frequently changing input string s. I need to find the longest matching substring from any string in the library to s, starting from the beginning of string s, in minimal time. In a perfect world, I would also return the next longest match from the library, and the next best, and so on. This is not the longest common string problem - I'm not looking for the longest common string for all the strings in the library... I just need a pairwise best substring between s and each string in the vast library as fast as possible.

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• Getting macro keys from a razer blackwidow to work on linux

  - by Journeyman Geek

  I picked up a razer blackwidow ultimate that has additional keys meant for macros that are set using a tool that's installed on windows. I'm assuming that these arn't some fancypants joojoo keys and should emit scancodes like any other keys. Firstly is there a standard way to check these scancodes in linux? Secondly how do i set these keys to do things in command line and x based linux setups? My current linux install is xubuntu 10.10, but i'll be switching to kubuntu once i have a few things fixed up. Ideally the answer should be generic and system-wide Things i have tried so far: showkeys from the built in kbd package (in a seperate vt) - macro keys not detected xev - macro keys not detected lsusb and evdev output this ahk script's output suggests the M keys are not outputting standard scancodes Things i need to try snoopy pro + reverse engineering (oh dear) Wireshark - preliminary futzing around seems to indicate no scancodes emitted when what i seem to think is the keyboard is monitored and keys pressed. Might indicate additional keys are a seperate device or need to be initialised somehow. Need to cross reference that with lsusb output from linux, in 3 scenarios - standalone, passed through to a windows VM without the drivers installed, and the same with. LSUSB only detects one device on a standalone linux install It might be useful to check if the mice use the same razer synapse driver , since that means some variation of razercfg might work (not detected. only seems to work for mice) Things i have Have worked out: In a windows system with the driver, the keyboard is seen as a keyboard and a pointing device. And said pointing device uses, in addition to your bog standard mouse drivers.. a driver for something called a razer synapse. Mouse driver seen in linux under evdev and lsusb as well Single Device under OS X apparently, though i have yet to try lsusb equivilent on that Keyboard goes into pulsing backlight mode in OS X upon initialisation with the driver. This should probably indicate that there's some initialisation sequence sent to the keyboard on activation. They are, in fact, fancypants joojoo keys. Extending this question a little I have access to a windows system so if i need to use any tools on that to help answer the question, its fine. I can also try it on systems with and without the config utility. The expected end result is still to make those keys usable on linux however. I also realise this is a very specific family of hardware. I would be willing to test anything that makes sense on a linux system if i have detailed instructions - this should open up the question to people who have linux skills, but no access to this keyboard The minimum end result i require I need these keys detected, and usable in any fashion on any of the current graphical mainstream ubuntu varients

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• Sharing Bandwidth and Prioritizing Realtime Traffic via HTB, Which Scenario Works Better?

  - by Mecki

  I would like to add some kind of traffic management to our Internet line. After reading a lot of documentation, I think HFSC is too complicated for me (I don't understand all the curves stuff, I'm afraid I will never get it right), CBQ is not recommend, and basically HTB is the way to go for most people. Our internal network has three "segments" and I'd like to share bandwidth more or less equally between those (at least in the beginning). Further I must prioritize traffic according to at least three kinds of traffic (realtime traffic, standard traffic, and bulk traffic). The bandwidth sharing is not as important as the fact that realtime traffic should always be treated as premium traffic whenever possible, but of course no other traffic class may starve either. The question is, what makes more sense and also guarantees better realtime throughput: Creating one class per segment, each having the same rate (priority doesn't matter for classes that are no leaves according to HTB developer) and each of these classes has three sub-classes (leaves) for the 3 priority levels (with different priorities and different rates). Having one class per priority level on top, each having a different rate (again priority won't matter) and each having 3 sub-classes, one per segment, whereas all 3 in the realtime class have highest prio, lowest prio in the bulk class, and so on. I'll try to make this more clear with the following ASCII art image: Case 1: root --+--> Segment A | +--> High Prio | +--> Normal Prio | +--> Low Prio | +--> Segment B | +--> High Prio | +--> Normal Prio | +--> Low Prio | +--> Segment C +--> High Prio +--> Normal Prio +--> Low Prio Case 2: root --+--> High Prio | +--> Segment A | +--> Segment B | +--> Segment C | +--> Normal Prio | +--> Segment A | +--> Segment B | +--> Segment C | +--> Low Prio +--> Segment A +--> Segment B +--> Segment C Case 1 Seems like the way most people would do it, but unless I don't read the HTB implementation details correctly, Case 2 may offer better prioritizing. The HTB manual says, that if a class has hit its rate, it may borrow from its parent and when borrowing, classes with higher priority always get bandwidth offered first. However, it also says that classes having bandwidth available on a lower tree-level are always preferred to those on a higher tree level, regardless of priority. Let's assume the following situation: Segment C is not sending any traffic. Segment A is only sending realtime traffic, as fast as it can (enough to saturate the link alone) and Segment B is only sending bulk traffic, as fast as it can (again, enough to saturate the full link alone). What will happen? Case 1: Segment A-High Prio and Segment B-Low Prio both have packets to send, since A-High Prio has the higher priority, it will always be scheduled first, till it hits its rate. Now it tries to borrow from Segment A, but since Segment A is on a higher level and Segment B-Low Prio has not yet hit its rate, this class is now served first, till it also hits the rate and wants to borrow from Segment B. Once both have hit their rates, both are on the same level again and now Segment A-High Prio is going to win again, until it hits the rate of Segment A. Now it tries to borrow from root (which has plenty of traffic spare, as Segment C is not using any of its guaranteed traffic), but again, it has to wait for Segment B-Low Prio to also reach the root level. Once that happens, priority is taken into account again and this time Segment A-High Prio will get all the bandwidth left over from Segment C. Case 2: High Prio-Segment A and Low Prio-Segment B both have packets to send, again High Prio-Segment A is going to win as it has the higher priority. Once it hits its rate, it tries to borrow from High Prio, which has bandwidth spare, but being on a higher level, it has to wait for Low Prio-Segment B again to also hit its rate. Once both have hit their rate and both have to borrow, High Prio-Segment A will win again until it hits the rate of the High Prio class. Once that happens, it tries to borrow from root, which has again plenty of bandwidth left (all bandwidth of Normal Prio is unused at the moment), but it has to wait again until Low Prio-Segment B hits the rate limit of the Low Prio class and also tries to borrow from root. Finally both classes try to borrow from root, priority is taken into account, and High Prio-Segment A gets all bandwidth root has left over. Both cases seem sub-optimal, as either way realtime traffic sometimes has to wait for bulk traffic, even though there is plenty of bandwidth left it could borrow. However, in case 2 it seems like the realtime traffic has to wait less than in case 1, since it only has to wait till the bulk traffic rate is hit, which is most likely less than the rate of a whole segment (and in case 1 that is the rate it has to wait for). Or am I totally wrong here? I thought about even simpler setups, using a priority qdisc. But priority queues have the big problem that they cause starvation if they are not somehow limited. Starvation is not acceptable. Of course one can put a TBF (Token Bucket Filter) into each priority class to limit the rate and thus avoid starvation, but when doing so, a single priority class cannot saturate the link on its own any longer, even if all other priority classes are empty, the TBF will prevent that from happening. And this is also sub-optimal, since why wouldn't a class get 100% of the line's bandwidth if no other class needs any of it at the moment? Any comments or ideas regarding this setup? It seems so hard to do using standard tc qdiscs. As a programmer it was such an easy task if I could simply write my own scheduler (which I'm not allowed to do).

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• Compress with Gzip or Deflate my CSS & JS files

  - by muhammad usman

  i ve a fashion website & using wordpress. I want to Compress or Gzip or Deflate my CSS & JS files. i have tried many codes with .htaccess to compress but not working. Would any body help me please? My phpinfo is http://deemasfashion.co.uk/1.php below are the codes i have tried not not working. Few of them might be same but there is a difference in the syntax. <ifModule mod_gzip.c> mod_gzip_on Yes mod_gzip_dechunk Yes mod_gzip_item_include file .(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$ mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$ mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.* mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.* mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.* mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.* </ifModule> other code I have tried but not working... <files *.css> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </files> <files *.js> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </files> I have also tried this code as well but no success. <ifModule mod_gzip.c> mod_gzip_on Yes mod_gzip_dechunk Yes mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$ mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$ mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.* mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.* mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.* mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.* </ifModule> This code is also not working <FilesMatch "\.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$"> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </FilesMatch> Here is another code not working. <ifmodule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x- javascript application/javascript </ifmodule> Here is another code not working. <IFModule mod_deflate.c> <filesmatch "\.(js|css|html|jpg|png|php)$"> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </filesmatch> </IFModule> Here is another code not working. <IfModule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript text/javascript application/javascript application/json <FilesMatch "\.(css|js)$" > SetOutputFilter DEFLATE </FilesMatch> </IfModule> Here is another code not working. #Gzip - compress text, html, javascript, css, xml <ifmodule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript </ifmodule> #End Gzip Here is another code not working. <Location /> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|gz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary </Location>

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• Strange Recurrent Excessive I/O Wait

  - by Chris

  I know quite well that I/O wait has been discussed multiple times on this site, but all the other topics seem to cover constant I/O latency, while the I/O problem we need to solve on our server occurs at irregular (short) intervals, but is ever-present with massive spikes of up to 20k ms a-wait and service times of 2 seconds. The disk affected is /dev/sdb (Seagate Barracuda, for details see below). A typical iostat -x output would at times look like this, which is an extreme sample but by no means rare: iostat (Oct 6, 2013) tps rd_sec/s wr_sec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 16.00 0.00 156.00 9.75 21.89 288.12 36.00 57.60 5.50 0.00 44.00 8.00 48.79 2194.18 181.82 100.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 46.49 3397.00 500.00 100.00 4.50 0.00 40.00 8.89 43.73 5581.78 222.22 100.00 14.50 0.00 148.00 10.21 13.76 5909.24 68.97 100.00 1.50 0.00 12.00 8.00 8.57 7150.67 666.67 100.00 0.50 0.00 4.00 8.00 6.31 10168.00 2000.00 100.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 5.27 11001.00 500.00 100.00 0.50 0.00 4.00 8.00 2.96 17080.00 2000.00 100.00 34.00 0.00 1324.00 9.88 1.32 137.84 4.45 59.60 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 22.00 44.00 204.00 11.27 0.01 0.27 0.27 0.60 Let me provide you with some more information regarding the hardware. It's a Dell 1950 III box with Debian as OS where uname -a reports the following: Linux xx 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 15:39:52 UTC 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux The machine is a dedicated server that hosts an online game without any databases or I/O heavy applications running. The core application consumes about 0.8 of the 8 GBytes RAM, and the average CPU load is relatively low. The game itself, however, reacts rather sensitive towards I/O latency and thus our players experience massive ingame lag, which we would like to address as soon as possible. iostat: avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 1.77 0.01 1.05 1.59 0.00 95.58 Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn sdb 13.16 25.42 135.12 504701011 2682640656 sda 1.52 0.74 20.63 14644533 409684488 Uptime is: 19:26:26 up 229 days, 17:26, 4 users, load average: 0.36, 0.37, 0.32 Harddisk controller: 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 1078 (rev 04) Harddisks: Array 1, RAID-1, 2x Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 73 GB SAS Array 2, RAID-1, 2x Seagate ST3500620SS Barracuda ES.2 500GB 16MB 7200RPM SAS Partition information from df: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb1 480191156 30715200 425083668 7% /home /dev/sda2 7692908 437436 6864692 6% / /dev/sda5 15377820 1398916 13197748 10% /usr /dev/sda6 39159724 19158340 18012140 52% /var Some more data samples generated with iostat -dx sdb 1 (Oct 11, 2013) Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rsec/s wsec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util sdb 0.00 15.00 0.00 70.00 0.00 656.00 9.37 4.50 1.83 4.80 33.60 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 12.00 836.00 500.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.00 0.00 32.00 10.67 9.96 1990.67 333.33 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.00 0.00 40.00 10.00 6.96 3075.00 250.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 16.00 8.00 2.62 4648.00 500.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 0.00 16.00 16.00 1.69 7024.00 1000.00 100.00 sdb 0.00 74.00 0.00 124.00 0.00 1584.00 12.77 1.09 67.94 6.94 86.00 Characteristic charts generated with rrdtool can be found here: iostat plot 1, 24 min interval: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/600/yqm3.png/ iostat plot 2, 120 min interval: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/407/griw.png/ As we have a rather large cache of 5.5 GBytes, we thought it might be a good idea to test if the I/O wait spikes would perhaps be caused by cache miss events. Therefore, we did a sync and then this to flush the cache and buffers: echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches and directly afterwards the I/O wait and service times virtually went through the roof, and everything on the machine felt like slow motion. During the next few hours the latency recovered and everything was as before - small to medium lags in short, unpredictable intervals. Now my question is: does anybody have any idea what might cause this annoying behaviour? Is it the first indication of the disk array or the raid controller dying, or something that can be easily mended by rebooting? (At the moment we're very reluctant to do this, however, because we're afraid that the disks might not come back up again.) Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Chris. Edited to add: we do see one or two processes go to 'D' state in top, one of which seems to be kjournald rather frequently. If I'm not mistaken, however, this does not indicate the processes causing the latency, but rather those affected by it - correct me if I'm wrong. Does the information about uninterruptibly sleeping processes help us in any way to address the problem? @Andy Shinn requested smartctl data, here it is: smartctl -a -d megaraid,2 /dev/sdb yields: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: SEAGATE ST3500620SS Version: MS05 Serial number: Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Mon Oct 14 20:37:13 2013 CEST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 20 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 1236631092 Blocks received from initiator = 1097862364 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1383620256 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 531295338 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 51986460 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 36556.93 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 32 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 509271032 47 0 509271079 509271079 20981.423 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 5022.039 0 verify: 1870931090 196 0 1870931286 1870931286 100558.708 0 Non-medium error count: 0 SMART Self-test log Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ] Description number (hours) # 1 Background short Completed 16 36538 - [- - -] # 2 Background short Completed 16 36514 - [- - -] # 3 Background short Completed 16 36490 - [- - -] # 4 Background short Completed 16 36466 - [- - -] # 5 Background short Completed 16 36442 - [- - -] # 6 Background long Completed 16 36420 - [- - -] # 7 Background short Completed 16 36394 - [- - -] # 8 Background short Completed 16 36370 - [- - -] # 9 Background long Completed 16 36364 - [- - -] #10 Background short Completed 16 36361 - [- - -] #11 Background long Completed 16 2 - [- - -] #12 Background short Completed 16 0 - [- - -] Long (extended) Self Test duration: 6798 seconds [113.3 minutes] smartctl -a -d megaraid,3 /dev/sdb yields: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: SEAGATE ST3500620SS Version: MS05 Serial number: Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Mon Oct 14 20:37:26 2013 CEST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 19 C Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 288745640 Blocks received from initiator = 1097848399 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1304149705 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 527414694 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 51986460 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 36596.83 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 28 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 610862490 44 0 610862534 610862534 20470.133 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 5022.480 0 verify: 2861227413 203 0 2861227616 2861227616 100872.443 0 Non-medium error count: 1 SMART Self-test log Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ] Description number (hours) # 1 Background short Completed 16 36580 - [- - -] # 2 Background short Completed 16 36556 - [- - -] # 3 Background short Completed 16 36532 - [- - -] # 4 Background short Completed 16 36508 - [- - -] # 5 Background short Completed 16 36484 - [- - -] # 6 Background long Completed 16 36462 - [- - -] # 7 Background short Completed 16 36436 - [- - -] # 8 Background short Completed 16 36412 - [- - -] # 9 Background long Completed 16 36404 - [- - -] #10 Background short Completed 16 36401 - [- - -] #11 Background long Completed 16 2 - [- - -] #12 Background short Completed 16 0 - [- - -] Long (extended) Self Test duration: 6798 seconds [113.3 minutes]

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• SQL IO and SAN troubles

  - by James

  We are running two servers with identical software setup but different hardware. The first one is a VM on VMWare on a normal tower server with dual core xeons, 16 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM drive. The second one is a VM on XenServer on a powerful brand new rack server, with 4 core xeons and shared storage. We are running Dynamics AX 2012 and SQL Server 2008 R2. When I insert 15 000 records into a table on the slow tower server (as a test), it does so in 13 seconds. On the fast server it takes 33 seconds. I re-ran these tests several times with the same results. I have a feeling it is some sort of IO bottleneck, so I ran SQLIO on both. Here are the results for the slow tower server: C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS C:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file C:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 226.97 MBs/sec: 1.77 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 0 Avg_Latency(ms): 281 Max_Latency(ms): 467 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 99 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS C:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file C:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 91.34 MBs/sec: 0.71 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 14 Avg_Latency(ms): 699 Max_Latency(ms): 1124 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS C :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file C:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1094.50 MBs/sec: 68.40 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 0 Avg_Latency(ms): 58 Max_Latency(ms): 467 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS C :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file C:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1155.31 MBs/sec: 72.20 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 17 Avg_Latency(ms): 55 Max_Latency(ms): 205 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 Here are the results of the fast rack server: C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS E:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file E:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for write): The system cannot find the pa th specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS E:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file E:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for read): The system cannot find the pat h specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS E :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file E:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for write): The system cannot find the pa th specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS E :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file E:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for read): The system cannot find the pat h specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS c:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file c:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 2575.77 MBs/sec: 20.12 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 1 Avg_Latency(ms): 24 Max_Latency(ms): 655 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 5 8 9 9 9 8 5 3 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 37 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS c:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file c:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1141.39 MBs/sec: 8.91 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 1 Avg_Latency(ms): 55 Max_Latency(ms): 652 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 91 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS c :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file c:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 341.37 MBs/sec: 21.33 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 5 Avg_Latency(ms): 186 Max_Latency(ms): 120037 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS c :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file c:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1024.07 MBs/sec: 64.00 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 5 Avg_Latency(ms): 61 Max_Latency(ms): 81632 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 Three of the four tests are, to my mind, within reasonable parameters for the rack server. However, the 64 write test is incredibly slow on the rack server. (68 mb/sec on the slow tower vs 21 mb/s on the rack). The read speed for 64k also seems slow. Is this enough to say there is some sort of bottleneck with the shared storage? I need to know if I can take this evidence and say we need to launch an investigation into this. Any help is appreciated.

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• How to get physical partition name from iSCSI details on Windows?

  - by Barry Kelly

  I've got a piece of software that needs the name of a partition in \Device\Harddisk2\Partition1 style, as shown e.g. in WinObj. I want to get this partition name from details of the iSCSI connection that underlies the partition. The trouble is that disk order is not fixed - depending on what devices are connected and initialized in what order, it can move around. So suppose I have the portal name (DNS of the iSCSI target), target IQN, etc. I'd like to somehow discover which volumes in the system relate to it, in an automated fashion. I can write some PowerShell WMI queries that get somewhat close to the desired info: PS> get-wmiobject -class Win32_DiskPartition NumberOfBlocks : 204800 BootPartition : True Name : Disk #0, Partition #0 PrimaryPartition : True Size : 104857600 Index : 0 ... From the Name here, I think I can fabricate the corresponding name by adding 1 to the partition number: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 - Partition0 appears to be a fake partition mapping to the whole disk. But the above doesn't have enough information to map to the underlying physical device, unless I take a guess based on exact size matching. I can get some info on SCSI devices, but it's not helpful in joining things up (iSCSI target is Nexenta/Solaris COMSTAR): PS> get-wmiobject -class Win32_SCSIControllerDevice __GENUS : 2 __CLASS : Win32_SCSIControllerDevice ... Antecedent : \\COBRA\root\cimv2:Win32_SCSIController.DeviceID="ROOT\\ISCSIPRT\\0000" Dependent : \\COBRA\root\cimv2:Win32_PnPEntity.DeviceID="SCSI\\DISK&VEN_NEXENTA&PROD_COMSTAR... Similarly, I can run queries like these: PS> get-wmiobject -namespace ROOT\WMI -class MSiSCSIInitiator_TargetClass PS> get-wmiobject -namespace ROOT\WMI -class MSiSCSIInitiator_PersistentDevices These guys return information relating to my iSCSI target name and the GUID volume name respectively (a volume name like \\?\Volume{guid-goes-here}), but the GUID volume name is no good to me, and there doesn't appear to be a reliable correspondence between the target name and the volume that I can join on. I simply can't find an easy way of getting from an IQN (e.g. iqn.1992-01.com.example:storage:diskarrays-sn-a8675309) to physical partitions mapped from that target. The way I do it by hand? I start Disk Management, and look for a partition of the correct size, verify that its driver says NEXENTA COMSTAR, and look at the disk number. But even this is unreliable if I have multiple iSCSI volumes of the exact same size. Any suggestions?

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• Windows 2008 IIS 7.0 HTTP to HTTPS Redirect -- Versus IIS 6.0 Mechanism

  - by Dan7el

  This topic, creating a mechanism for redirection from HTTP to HTTPS on a Windows 2008 server running IIS 7.0 is a much written-about topic on the Internet. How this is done is really not so much my issue. My issue is more of explaining why this can't be done with the standard HTTP Redirect module that ships with Windows 2008 IIS 7.0. Instead, there are other methods needed that are more arduous. First, the IIS 6.0 method requires no externally available modules nor does it require any additional modifications to the web.config or any type of other development effort. It's outlined here: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/dorr/archive/2009/01/13/how-to-force-redirection-from-http-to-https-on-iis-6-0.aspx And, you can see the basic steps are to run the snap-in, get the properties on the site, and do some modifications. Presto, you have the HTTP -- HTTP redirect setup. Now, on the IIS 7.0 platform, it doesn't seem this simple. An initial search found the following site: http://www.sslshopper.com/iis7-redirect-http-to-https.html Which has two separate approcates: 1. Involves installing a separately available Microsoft module -- URL Rewrite Module, and then adding XML to the web.config. 2. Custom Error Page. ...there might be other methods, but these are the basic ones and the first is listed as the primary method. But wait...There exists on the IIS 7.0 an HTTP Redirect Module. So...why can't I use the HTTP Redirect Module to do this very thing? This is really my big question. I need to know this because my management is going to insist I use the HTTP Redirect Module and set up the HTTP to HTTPS redirect in a similar fashion to how we do in IIS 6.0. Can someone please explain to me, in clean, simple, easy to understand, terms that both I and my management can understand as to why I need to go get the URL Rewrite Module and install that on the server and make the web.config changes suggested by the article instead of simply using the HTTP Redirect module that's already installed on the site? Thanks a bunch.

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• Asus M4A79XTD-EVO / AMD Phenom II X4 965 Crashes / BSOD / Hangs / Restarts

  - by Tiby

  I'll try to be as concise as possible because I have a lot to say about my problem, but I'd rather say it when asked or when I feel it's necessary, just to make this initial reading clearer. For about a year and a half I have periods when my system has all the problems in the title (I'll use the word 'crash' for either one). I'll list some patterns and what I tried to do and what were the results, but the list is not exclusive: usually it crashes when a CPU-intensive operation is in progress, like a game or video encoding or HD movie rendering, but also sometimes crashes when I'm doing nothing after a first crash the system is very unstable and sometimes it crashes even during POST, or doesn't boot at all Some months ago I went to a local service (one that you just put your computer on the table and sit there with a guy and trying to figure out the problem, very rare these days) and they used OCCT and it crashed every time he changed some part to test it out (PSU, RAM, video card, HDD). The last one was the CPU. They changed the CPU and it didn't crash any more. Then when they put my CPU back, it also didn't crash. We figured that the trouble was the thermal paste (probably some 2 years old) because it was the only thing changed while testing. Up until 2 weeks ago, I haven't had any more problems. 2 weeks ago the problems reappeared. I changed again the thermal paste, put some Arctic Silver 5, and for about a week everything worked perfect (tried some games, video encoding, no more crashes). But again it started crashing in the same fashion as the first time. But now, instead, I figured out a very odd behaviour: when I start some of the apps above, in most cases it crashes if I start OCCT and turn on the CPU test, and run any of the programs above, it doesn't crash, even if the CPU is on 100% load (and 65-70 degrees Celsius temperature) if I shut down OCCT and continue using the programs, it crashes in a very short period of time (even if the CPU is on 5-10% load and 40 degrees) There are so many patterns and temporary solutions that I figured out in this year and a half period of time, that I can't include them all because I don't know which one are more relevant, but I'll happily provide any details you ask. My system is: CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3400 MHz - 125W) MB: ASUS M4A79XTD - EVO RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB (2 x 4GB) CL8 1600MHz Video: HIS Radeon HD5770 1GB PSU: Corsair 750W HDD: Western Digital 1TB OS: Win 7 Enterprise 64 BIT (also tried with Windows Server 2008 R2 Trial and Win XP)

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• Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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